Google has already received approval from the United States Department of Justice as well as the European Union but is still awaiting approval from China, Taiwan and Israel before the deal can be finalised.

However in preparation for the merger, Google is planning on replacing current CEO Sanjay Jha with one of its own executives, Dennis Woodside, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg. Woodside, who has previously overseen Google’s ad sales in the Americas growing them by 65 per cent in three years, has recently been overseeing the merger with Motorola Mobility.

On his way in, Dennis Woodside

While Google’s main motivation for paying $12.5bn for Motorola Mobility is the trove of 17,000 patents held by the mobile phone manufacturer, it will also need to sort out the hardware strategy for its new acquisition – an area Google doesn’t have much expertise in.

While some manufacturers remain fearful this merger will see Google treating Motorola as a favoured partner, Google CEO, Larry Page, moved to quash those rumours last month: “We’ve been very clear that Motorola is obviously going to remain a licensee of Android, and Android will remain open. We have done a great job managing our partner ecosystem. That’s a difficult thing to do, and I think we do it quite well. And I expect we’re going to continue to do that well with Motorola.”